Re: OT: How do I use LaTeX?

Your understanding of LaTeX is basically correct.  LaTeX itself is
actually a set of macros on top of TeX, the actual language which is
interpreted to create the device-independent (DVI) document file,
which can then be transformed into PostScript, PDF, or whatever.
There are other macro packages, such as BibTeX for creating
bibliographies, etc.

TeX is something like Linux, in that you can either piece it together
yourself or get a prepackaged distribution.  If you're using a Windows
PC, I recommend the MiKTeX project's distribution, available at
http://www.miktex.org/, which has a remarkably painless setup process.

-Mark